NGL, whenever I work with Cocoa APIs, I wistfully think of another timeline where we get a system-level SmallTalk style REPL and ecosystem accessing all of it.

I genuinely do wonder why that has been the trajectory. When you look at the almost futuristic vision of interacting with living, programmable software objects and environments that evolve over time and you get a glimpse of it in Emacs, Pharo or Oberon (worth mentioning Free Oberon, fun to play around with https://free.oberon.org/en/ think it was on the frontpage recently), how did we go back to dead text files again?

I always have to think the "the world if" meme when I think about what would have happened if the whole Engelbart, Licklider, Alan Kay school of thought had won out